


how delicate

by zweebie



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Eddie's mom deserves to be in jail, Eddie-centric, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Panic Attacks, Pre-Relationship, Rated teen and up for language, Reddie, but a good amount of richie in there too, eddie is a mess, i guess?, main relationship could be interpreted as platonic if you're blind, meaning they don't kiss unfortunately, not much fluff but enough for the tag ig, posting this late at night so if i forget a tag don't blame me, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 00:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20921441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zweebie/pseuds/zweebie
Summary: Three things happen before Eddie Kaspbrak shows up, hair dripping, in day-old clothes, nothing on him but a dead walkie-talkie, on Richie Tozier’s doorstep. His fanny pack—his mom had replaced the “lost” one quickly enough—lays abandoned in his room; the walkie-talkie is clenched tightly in his fist.For the second time in his life, Eddie runs away from home.





	how delicate

Three things happen before Eddie Kaspbrak shows up, hair dripping, in day-old clothes, nothing on him but a dead walkie-talkie, on Richie Tozier’s doorstep. His fanny pack—his mom had replaced the “lost” one quickly enough—lays abandoned in his room; the walkie-talkie is clenched tightly in his fist. 

Richie is shocked to see him. 

“Eds,” he says, uncharacteristically succinct. “What’re you doing here?”

“Can I just come in, please?” Eddie asks, rubbing his arms. They’re covered in goosebumps. “I can’t be at that house any longer.” He’s itching to head inside, wrap up in a blanket. The summer’s finally ending, autumn showing itself in brown leaves and occasional brisk air, and that on top of being in the rain is a sure enough way to get hypothermia. He feels the panic setting in, and he takes a deep breath. 

_ You’re strong, Eddie. (Fragile.) You can do this. (Delicate). Fuck. _

“Are you okay?” Richie asks. He doesn’t invite Eddie in, which from anyone else Eddie would find rude, but Eddie stopped being offended by Richie years ago.

“Yeah, if you could hurry the fuck up?” Eddie prompts, words quick. “It’s fucking freezing out here.”

“Yeah, of course, Eds,” Richie says, a little crease between his eyebrows. Uncharacteristic again. He turns around and walks inside, letting Eddie follow him. “Sorry, my sister’s not free right now. She got crabs, like I told her she would, and I said you probably got it from your mom, but she didn’t believe me. Actually, she told me to get the fuck out of her room, but anyway, I thought you should know, since you always seem so interested—”

“Can I have a towel?”

Richie pauses, mouth open, but only for a moment. “What’d you do, jump in a lake? I knew you were an idiot, but you do know that you’re not supposed to jump in the water fully clothed, right? Or did you run into Belch Huggins again? Eddie, you’re a fuckin’ twig, I don’t know how you can keep standing up to them. What’d you say to make them so mad? Did you tell them they were going to contract chlamydia or something? I’m not sure their pea brains would even be able to understand—”

Eddie lets him talk, not bothering to yell over him like he might have two months ago. Not because he’s anymore willing to tolerate Richie’s idiocy than he was. He’s just too tired to open his mouth right now.

That said, it really is getting cold. “Pea brain? You’re one to talk, trashmouth.” Richie’s face splits in a grin, and Eddie can’t help but half-smile back. “If you won’t get me a towel, I’d be happy to get one from your sister’s room. I know my way around.”

“Hey, I already told you she has crabs, right? Probably from you.”

“Shut up, Richie.” 

“Just checking,” Richie says, grinning good-naturedly. Eddie shivers.  
  


* * *

[March, 1989]

Eddie is eleven when he gets his first panic attack. It’s after they find Richie’s backpack, still in his locker, the door on the linoleum floor and warped from where Bowers tore it off its hinges.

Eddie is the one that finds it.

“I swear to god, guys,” he’s saying, one hand on the strap of Richie’s backpack and the other ushering Bill along, “if we’re late again Mr Reynolds is gonna kill me—”

“Y-y-you haven’t been l-late in weeks,” Bill says.

“I swear he hates me, though. Last time I was one measly minute late and he held me back. I swear when he dies and they do an autopsy, they’ll find a stick up his ass. I bet you a million dollars.”

“I’d want to hear the story behind that,” Richie says, flailing away under Richie’s hand.

“Of course you do,” Stanley says as they round the corner.

“No, I’m serious! I mean, how did it get up there? I bet it was some freaky sex thing, you know?” 

He chatters on as they reach their lockers. Eddie grabs his own bag, then, after waiting a moment to see if Richie will pause in order to get his own, reaches into Richie’s locker.

And then he screams.

“Eddie?” Richie asks, spinning. Then, “Oh, my god,” as he looks at his backpack. “Holy shit! Bowers took a shit in my bag! He actually fucking did!” Richie cries. “I really didn’t think he was the sort of person that would keep his promises! Look, he tore the door off and everything.”

“That seems unnecessary,” Stanley says, looking down at it, “you always leave it unlocked.”

“Do you see this shit?” Richie goes on. “I can’t believe this. Eddie, do you see this shit? Eddie?”

Eddie’s fumbling for his inhaler, unzipping his fanny pack, trying to keep taking deep breaths. “That’s.” He gasps. “That’s so fucking disgusting, oh my god. Oh my god.” He takes a puff, holds his breath, counts to five. Then another. He wipes his hand off on his pants. How many different types of bacteria are there in feces? It’ll probably have gotten in his fingernails, all over his skin—how long will that take to wash off? What if he has a paper cut? God, then it’ll get infected. Is his heart supposed to be beating so loud? So fast?

“Hey, Eds,” Richie says, but his voice sounds far away. It’s almost quiet behind the jackhammering that is Eddie’s chest. He reaches out to touch Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie flinches away. “Eds, are you okay?”

“I’m having a fucking...I’m having a fucking heart attack and you ask if I’m fucking okay?” Eddie gasps. What are the symptoms again? Pain in your arm, and in your chest, too. He’s got that. Pain in his chest. That’s one off the checklist. And fuck, if he could hear himself think over that  _ thump, thump, thump _ —”Holy shit. Holy fucking...fucking shit. I am not dying in the school hallway,” he gets out, hand clutching at his own chest.

“E-Eddie, what’s going on?” Bill asks, gripping his backpack strap tight.

Richie grabs Eddie’s heaving shoulder. “Hey, are you serious? Is this real? Should I call 911?” 

“You think I’m fucking faking a heart attack?” Eddie snaps, and then he bends double, gagging. 

“I’ll d-d-do it,” Bill says, and runs off to find a phone. 

Eddie falls a little; Stanley catches and steadies him, lowering him so that he’s sitting on the ground. Richie puts a hand on his back, rubbing little circles there, telling him again and again that it’s gonna be okay, that an ambulance is coming, that they won’t let anything happen to him. And Eddie really, truly, completely believe that this is it. He keeps his eyes open, etches his friends’ faces into his mind. If he’s going to go, he’s not going to forget them. If there is an afterlife, Eddie is bringing that memory, of all of them, with him. His best friends holding him.

It isn’t a heart attack, in the end. The doctor call it a  _ panic  _ attack. Eddie is diagnosed with anxiety on March twenty-fourth, nineteen-eighty-nine. Now, he supposes, it’s the only one of the diagnoses that isn't bullshit. Of course, his mom doesn’t let him go home just yet. She’s terrified, absolutely scared shitless. She leaves Eddie alone in the hotel room for some hours, and when she comes back, she tells him that he’s going to have to stay in the hospital for several days.

“I thought it wasn’t that serious,” Eddie says quietly. He always speaks quietly with his ma. He knows that he’s the delicate one, of the two, but sometimes it seems like she’s the one that’s going to break at any moment. Fragile, like one touch could shatter her.

“I know, honey,” she says comfortingly, even though that’s not what he needs or what he was asking. “They just want to monitor you, make sure it’s not something more serious.”

“Okay, mommy.”

“Now go to sleep. You’ve been very badly frightened, I’m sure, so make sure to get some rest.”

He nods, and she sits down in the little chair in the corner of the room, pulling out a magazine.

It’s a long two weeks.

* * *

Soon, Eddie is sitting wrapped up by Richie's heater in the basement. They've talked about the basement before—about all of it. About how they can't go into dark rooms on their own, about how sometimes they wake up in the night to learn that they've been crying out in their sleep. They've talked about how they can't even see a yellow raincoat on the street without having it all come crashing back, without suddenly not being able to breathe. 

Eddie can't help but think how much easier that July would have been if he'd had his friends. Maybe it wouldn't have made him less afraid, but at least he would have been afraid with them. 

"You still haven't said why you're all wet. Unless it's sweat, in which case you were either having really amazing sex—and if I’m right, I want all the details, like who found your scrawny ass attractive and their address so I can go beat them up for taking your viginity before I could—or you actually had to lift something heavy for once in your life—"

"Hey, I didn't ask to be fucking taken out of PE." Eddie didn’t. He really, really didn’t.

"I didn't say you asked, but now that you’ve mentioned it, maybe if you'd been there it wouldn't have been quite so fucking torturous. I swear to you, Mr. Kravitz kept staring at my ass," Richie says, warming up. "I mean, I don't blame him, but jesus fuck, he's a teacher and I'm but a helpless—"

"It's not sweat, okay? It's fucking rain. Are you happy now?" 

Richie doesn’t slow down. “It hasn’t rained since morning, why the fuck—”

“You know, believe it or not, I didn’t actually come here to hear you talk my ear off for an hour, and I’m having a bit of a crisis at the moment, so maybe if you could shut the fuck up, that would be perfect,” Eddie snaps, and Richie goes quiet for a moment.

“Well, out with it!” he yells suddenly in a terrible British accent, loud enough to make Eddie jump. “The doctor’s in, come on, what’s wrong?”

“Jesus, really? The british guy?”

“I said out with it! No use coopin’ it up, better just get it over with!” He’s still yelling, brash and obnoxious.

“You know,” Eddie snaps, grabbing his walkie-talkie and stuffing it into his pocket, “I thought this was a good idea, to come here, but clearly—”

“Wait,” Richie cries, standing up a little. Eddie looks at him expectantly. Richie quiets. “I’m sorry, I—please. I’m an idiot. You don’t have to tell me.”

Eddie stands there for a moment, and then sighs. “Do you have any music?” he asks.

“Oh, absolutely,” Richie says, jumping up. Eddie follows him upstairs to his room, not mentioning the fact that Richie isn’t really allowed to play music after nine pm, thankful that Richie doesn’t mention it either. 

* * *

[July, 1989]

July that year is the longest month of his life. It’s a stifling cycle of taking a shower, taking his pills, reading and rereading and rereading, and then pills and shower and sleep. Rinse and repeat. If he’s lucky, he’ll get his hands on a newspaper. Everytime he does, he skims through it in a frenzy. He always pinches the paper too tight, turns the pages a little too wildly, and he knows it could worry his ma, but he’s always terrified he’ll see something new. A new Local Girl Missing headline. A body found. 

Every day there’s nothing, but every day Eddie checks.

They’d beaten it. They’d chased the monster back into the sewers, where it belonged. And Eddie had come back safe, to a loving mother and a clean and healthy household, and he should be okay. He should be free He  _ is  _ free.

But It still has a hold on him, too strong for comfort.

It’s not just the newspapers, either. It’s the things he sees in the shadows at night. The way he’s taken to sleeping with a light on. It’s easy to explain to his mom; she probably wouldn’t question it anyway. Anything for her little boy. 

The lights don’t reach everywhere, though. And he’s convinced that there’s something behind the desk, in the closet, waiting to pounce on him from behind a door. Yellow eyes, glowing in the dark. A gleeful, burbling laugh.

A torn face. Blood, dripping in the wrong direction. A leper, sores oozing, rotted fingers resting on his shoulder. That day in the house shows up again and again in his dreams, every night. And every night Pennywise tells him something different.  _ “Poor Eddie. Poor pathetic, delicate thing.”  _ And  _ “Your friends left you, didn’t they? Left you all alone.”  _ Some nights, it’s  _ “Did you think that by locking yourself inside your little house you can escape me? Oh, no, Eddie Spaghetti. That just makes it easier for me.”  _

He wakes shaking, sweating, covers kicked onto the floor. And then he picks them up, lays them over him, and lies there, eyes shut, awake and aware, until the sun comes through the curtains and he can hear his ma walking down the stairs. 

Eddie knows it’s not her fault. He knows she just wants to protect him. He knows that he’s sick and that this is all for his own good. But he can’t help but entertain the idea, once or twice, that he could find some way out. He wants someone to talk to about all of this. He  _ needs  _ someone to talk to about all of this. And it’s not like he can just tell his mom that he and his friends got attacked by a killer clown. No, they’re the only ones. And they’re impossibly far away.

Instead, he thrashes at night. He leaves the lights on, keeps a wary eye on the shadows, and doesn’t even look in the direction of the sewer. He clenches his fists until there are little bloody half-moons in them...and then scrubs them clean, over and over and over again, wincing as the disinfectant touches the cut.

The Loser’s club survived the clown, but did Eddie? Is he alive after all? He’s not always sure.

* * *

They end up curled up on top of the covers, Eddie scooched over until he’s practically in Richie’s lap. The music is almost as quiet as it can get, but Richie makes up for it by yelling along to the lyrics, holding up a pen to his mouth like a microphone. 

His voice is godawful, and it must show on Eddie’s face, because Richie pokes him in the cheek and says, “Oh, is there something wrong with my singing? Is there?”

“Stop fucking—get off of me!” Eddie cries, with is a fun joke, because  _ he’s  _ the one almost on top of Richie.

“Is it not good enough for your highness?” Richie shouts, adn then belts out one of the riffs. “Huh?” He pokes Eddie in the cheek, and Eddie laughs, pushing him.

“You’re so fucking ridiculous.”

Richie doesn’t reply to that, just keeps on singing, wild and drunken. Eddie joins in, and then they’re both giggling like idiots.

It’s such a sweetly familiar scene that Eddie almost feels alright, for a moment. 

After a couple songs, the music switches to something quieter, more relaxed, and Eddie and Richie quiet down.

“Don’t your parents have an issue with you playing music while they’re asleep?” Eddie asks, because of fucking course he has to bring up parents. And now he’s fidgeting again, antsy and stressed out and he can’t get the image of his ma crying in his absence out of his head. Of her shutting the door on him gently every time she left the house, locking it.

But Richie seems totally oblivious to that. “Nah, they’re not home.” 

It occurs to Eddie that it hadn’t seemed strange for Richie’s parents not to come downstairs, for them not to greet him or check up on him. “You’re so lucky they let you stay home alone,” Eddie says, resting his head on Richie’s shoulder. He can feel Richie’s breathing, can feel him glance toward Eddie and then away.

“Yeah,” Richie says, smiling a little. “Can’t imagine your mom would let up on her reign of terror for one second and let you actually have fun.”

Eddie  _ hms.  _ “Reign of terror? For some reason I thought you liked my mom.” Not seriously, but.

“Oh, I do, Eddie Spaghetti, I do.”

* * *

[August, 1989, and after]

The seven kids stand in the fading light, outside the house on Neibolt street for the final time. Or what they hope is the final time. Twenty-seven years—so much can happen. Will they still be friends? Will they have long split? Will Eddie have raised a family, or will he still be alone? 

Future. He might have a future. They all might.

He’d thought so many times that they would die, this summer. Seeing the rotting, sore-ridden fingers connected to the rotting-sore-ridden person in front of him. Pennywise, inches from his face. Richie’s hand on his cheek—a pathetic, last ditch effort at comfort. (It didn’t work as a comfort, strictly, but it stuck in Eddie’s mind for the whole month he was at home. He hadn’t wanted Pennywise’s face to be the last thing I saw. For some reason it makes him feel warm inside.) 

Suddenly, things don’t seem so bleak.

Then Eddie gets home, and things go back to the way they were. The way they were, except that everything’s tinted by the fact that Eddie knows. Eddie knows his meds are fake, that he isn’t sick, that his childhood was taken by nothing more than an overprotective mother. 

God, he was a fucking idiot. He didn’t even know what his sickness was—his ma hadn’t told him anything more than careful, sweetie, and you know how delicate you are. Did he play along with it because he believed her? Because he was just as terrified of his dying as she was? Or just because it was easier to do that than face facts.

After Neibolt, after Georgie and the clown and all of the horror that Eddie can’t share, his mom stops keeping him inside. He leaves the house quietly with a note on the kitchen table. When he comes home, there’s no more evidence of his ma’s worry than her pursed lips and the worried divot between her brows—he’d inherited it—and they speak nothing of it. 

Eddie finds himself spending more and more time with Richie, as things progress. Richie never comes to Eddie’s house—Eddie’s willing to push his luck a little, but shoving the fact that he’s meeting Richie in his mom’s face would be too far. Not that his meeting up with Richie is a capital-t Thing. Of course it’s not. Because even though Eddie looks at Richie sometimes and can’t look away, even though Richie pulled Eddie close when they thought they were about to die, even though Eddie secretly loves it when Richie pinches his cheeks and calls him cute, doesn’t mean Richie likes Eddie. Because Richie isn’t like that. No, fuck that—because they’re both boys, and that’s not how it works.

If any of his friends had to show their faces at his house, Richie would probably be the worst choice. Eddie’s ma hates Richie with a passion—”dirty boy,” she calls him. When they were little, Richie had come over to Eddie’s house for sleepovers almost every week, at least until they tried to climb out the window one night and sneak into the playground. It had all gone fine—or the climbing out the window part had, at least. But Eddie tripped on the sidewalk and skinned his knee, and the cut ended up getting infected. He was sick at home for weeks.

(Now, after everything that has happened, Eddie has to wonder if any of his sicknesses were real. Did he ever hear the diagnosis from the doctor themself? Eddie can’t even remember.)

So Eddie bikes to Richie’s house, or he finds him waiting outside the arcade for him. They buy ice cream, wander through the park. Eddie brings comic books to Richie’s house and they blast music and eat a frankly disgusting amount of chocolate. Richie seems to have an endless supply of peanut butter cups in in his bedroom. 

Eddie has been friends with Richie for years—he’d call them best friends, if he didn’t know that Richie would tease him mercilessly for it. (Or he’d pinch his cheeks and call him adorable, which is just as bad, really.) But something about hanging out with him, separate from the group, has felt different, lately. Slightly charged. Electric in their slight touches, in the way Richie grabs Eddie’s hand, in the way Eddie catches Richie looking at him over his Batman. Eddie thinks he likes it.

Things go on as they would. Considering how their summer had gone, considering that he’s Eddie fucking Kaspbrak, things are good. Happy. Peaceful.

Eddie feels alive, for the first time in years. Not delicate, alive. 

And then, one day, Eddie wakes up in the morning, and his mom is sitting at the foot of his bed, watching him. 

Okay.

"Good morning, Eddie," his ma says softly, placing a hand on his leg. 

"Good morning," Eddie replies, fucking confused but trying his best to keep it out of his voice.

"Eddie," she says, using his name again, which is usually a bad sign, "I went into the bathroom this morning, and I noticed your fanny pack hanging from the door." 

"Yeah, that's where I always leave it."

"I know, and I opened it, just to check to see if your meds needed to be topped up."

Technically, the meds never need to be topped up. They never needed to exist in the first place. But Eddie keeps his mouth shut. 

"I noticed," she continues, and it occurs to Eddie that the flatness of her voice seems to be wavering, like she's forcing something down, "that there were more pills in the jar than there should be. Haven't you been taking your pills, Eddie?"

Fuck. He hadn't been taking the pills since Neibolt, but he'd been careful to do away with them anyway. Flush them down the toilet, or let them go down the drain. He'd thought it had been a slightly silly precaution, but apparently his ma really was paying attention.

It makes his stomach hurt a little, and he tells his fingers not to itch for his inhaler.

"You were counting my pills?" he asks, voice a little hoarse.

"I'm only looking out for you, Eddie," she says, and his stomach definitely hurts.

"I don't need those meds, ma," he replies, voice edging up a couple decibels. "I'm not sick."

"You are, Eddie. You are sick. You know that. The doctors said it, remember? Remember that?"

Eddie tries to stand, tries to get out of his bed, but his ma puts a hand on his leg. His head knows that she really is just trying to help him, that she's his mother, that she knows what's best. But something else says that only one of those things is really true. "Doctors? All I remember is you coming into my hospital room and saying that I need to stay overnight for a scrape on the knee!"

"Sweetie," she says, her tone saying loud and clear that you're being unreasonable, "you could have gotten an infection."

"It was a scrape on the knee, ma!" he cries, wrestling his leg away and scrambling out of his bed. He's not sure, all of a sudden, why his heart is beating so fast. "Keeping me in the hospital, it—it was irrational."

"I was only looking out for you, Eddie," she says tenderly.

"Stop saying that!" he yells. "I'm not fucking sick, and I just want to have a normal life and—and not have to take fucking meds with me everywhere I go—"

He hears it first. It takes a moment for the pain to come, for him to realize that she's slapped him. Shit. 

Eddie's ma brings a hand to her mouth, eyes wide and frightened. "Eddie," she gasps, "Eddie, I'm so sorry."

Eddie just stands there dumbstruck, staring at her. He's never been hit in his life—not by anyone other than fucking It. 

"I didn't mean to, I love you, you know I didn't mean to—" she says, reaching out for what looks like a hug.

And suddenly he's in that house on Neibolt street again. There's a painted and awful face jeering at him, and he's cornered, and he can't fucking breathe, and he just turns and opens the door and leaves. Just fucking leaves. He's not even running, at first. There is no noble rescue. There is no Beverly, in the sewers. No heroic deed ahead of him. He just walks down the stairs, and then speeds into a jog, and then opens the door and fucking sprints down the street.

He can't hear his ma calling after him. He can't hear anything.

It rains. He wanders the city for hours, not keeping track of time, panicking and then convincing himself he’s going to be fine and then panicking again. Where can he go? What can he do? He doesn’t want to go back, but should he?

Who is someone he trusts? Who he knows isn’t going to send him home, who will listen to him, no matter what?

So he ends up at Richie’s house.

They sit there in silence for a little while, the only sound Freddie Mercury crooning through the radio speakers. 

“I’m not sick,” Eddie says quietly, eyes directed unfocusedly at the comics lining the bookshelf across the small bedroom.

“What?”

“I’m not fucking sick, Richie,” Eddie says, and he’s too tired to snap at him.

“So did you make all of that up just so you couldn’t hang out with us? I thought you were deathly athsmatic or some shit,” Richie says. There’s laughter in his voice. He doesn’t get it.

“No—” Eddie says, and he sits up, widening the distance between them so he can look Richie in the eyes. Richie’s eyes widen slightly. “I’m  _ not  _ sick. I—all my meds were, were—placebos. Fakes.”

“Wait, what the fuck? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, Richie, I—I don’t fucking know! I don’t know what to think. All my life my ma has told me one thing, and then the girl at the pharmacy, she—she said something else.”

“Hey,” Richie says softly, putting a hand on Eddie’s knee. 

Eddie ignores him. “And then I confronted my ma about it right before, before Neibolt, but she seems so—god _ dam  _ she seems so vulnerable, and I just—I don’t know what to do, I really dont—”

“Eds, Eds,” Richie says, moving his hand to Eddie cheek and making him meet his eyes. “Slow down.” Eddie stares at him, chest heaving, and he reaches for his fanny pack, for his inhaler. 

“Fuck, oh, fuck,” he gasps, wringing his hands, “oh, god, I need my inhaler, oh  _ shit _ —”

“Eddie, Eddie,  _ stop!”  _ Richie shouts, grabbing Eddie’s hands and holding them still. “You’re spiraling, and when you do that you need your inhaler, and you clearly don’t have it right now, and apparently you don’t even fucking need it, whatever that means, so just—just shut up and tell me what happened!” Richie lets out a breath, quiets down. “Maybe I can help.”

“I think…” Eddie says, and he takes a breath, trying to calm his roiling insides, “I think my mom has been keeping me. Like a prisoner, or something.”

“Holy fucking shit,” Richie breathes.

“I mean. Not a prisoner. But she’s so...so hyper-anxious about me getting sick that she’s been  _ telling  _ me I’m sick so that I don’t go outside, I guess. Like when I had to stop taking P.E. class, because she said I was too delicate. I guess I wasn’t as delicate as she thought, but she did everything in her power to protect me.”

“Shit, Eddie, are you okay?” Richie asks, and his voice has none of its normal teasing spark. 

“I don’t know,” Eddie says, honestly.

“Is there...anything I can do?”

Eddie shuts his eyes, feeling the tears coming. He feels Richie’s hand take his, squeeze it. “No, but can I stay here tonight?” 

“Fine, but stay the fuck away from my sister. We have really thin walls here, and if you two keep me awake I’m going to throw you out, I hope you know.” And it’s an awful thing to say, but it’s the perfect thing, too.

Eddie grins. “I make no promises,” he says, and he follows Richie into the hallway. 

Richie doesn’t let go of his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> yall i wanted to make them kiss at the end so bAD but thought it would probably be taking advantage, considering what eddie is going through. plenty of them being cute and romantic in the next fic i'm writing, though, no worries
> 
> thank you so much for reading!! i hope you liked it and if you did, leave kudos and/or a comment!! or hmu on tumblr at @we-never-stop-fighting or on twitter at @wylan_vaneck


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